Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Success in Syria Gives Putin The Advantage In Obama's Proxy War In Syria

This time last year, the Syrian military was in trouble, with thousands of ISIS insurrectionists advancing into areas of the country considered government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia.

Intelligence briefings published in press releases to mainstream media in the USA and Europe condidently predicted (not for the first time since 2011) that Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was facing defeat and was on the brink of fleeing the country.

Then Russia's Vladimir Putyin decided to take a hand. Aircrews and technical support staff arrived from Russia, the American's were warned not to get in the way, and Russia started to batter American-backed rebel forces with an air campaign that has forced them to retreat all the way to Libya (another country that benefitted from US intervention by being turned from Africa's most advanced and prosperous nation to a chaotic failed state, its infrastructure reduced to rubble by American, French and British bombs.

Now the rebels (Obama's 'moderate' extremists) are clinging to a few besieged neighborhoods in the divided city of Aleppo and say their shipments of CIA-provided antitank missiles are drying up.

For the first time since Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Russian military for the past year has been in direct combat with rebel forces trained and supplied by the C.I.A. The American-supplied Afghan fighters prevailed during that Cold War conflict. But this time the outcome has been different, primarily because Afghan tribesmen are in a different league as opponents. Their land has not been conquered since Alexander The Great withdrew.

“Russia has won the proxy war, at least for now,” said Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Russia’s success in Syria,after American efforts proved ineffectual for over a year, have given Moscow new leverage in decisions about the future of the Middle East. And sincethe US was exposed as having armed and facilitated Islamic extremism in collusion with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Washington's position has been growing weaker. Many European Union members, including Germany, Britain and France are seeking to rebuild relations with Moscow after supporting the economic sanctions Obama demanded in retaliation for Putin's humanitarian acts in Ukraine which prevented a genocide of ethnic Russians.

The Obama administration is now once again talking with President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, planning to share intelligence and coordinate airstrikes against the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria. Putin has met his goals in Syria without becoming caught in a quagmire that some, including President Obama, predicted he would.

Some military experts in the west point out that Mr. Putin has saddled Russia with the burden of propping up a Syrian regime that could not deal with the rebels on its own. In response to that we must remind ourselves that the rebels were from the start backed by the USA and its allies in a bid to overthrow Assad, just as the rebellion in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected government that was not sympathetic to Washington's geopolitical agenda were backed by the CIA whose operatives engineered the coup for them.

The Russian campaign in Syria began in September 2015, after a months long offensive by C.I.A.-backed rebel groups won new territory in Idlib, Hama and Latakia Provinces in northern Syria. One problem for Washington: Those groups sometimes fought alongside soldiers of the Nusra Front, which until recently was officially affiliated with Al Qaeda. The people in Washington were aware of this, Obama and the Muslim sympathisers in his administration never had any intention of crushing the anti - assad extremists, deposing Assad and thus doing Saudi Abria and Obama's other Wahabbi and Salafist (fundamentalist) allies a favour was always the priority.

The ISIS offensive prompted concerns in Moscow and Iran that Assad’s government, long supported by the Russians, might be in trouble.

Some of the rebel groups boasted at the time that TOW antitank missiles provided by American and Saudi governments were a key to their success. For several years, the C.I.A. has joined with the spy services of several Arab nations to arm and train the rebels at bases in Jordan and Qatar, with the Saudis bankrolling much of the operation. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about any American assistance to Syrian rebels, somewhat futile in view of a notorious leaker of classified material whose name is Snowden.

The real legacy of Obama's administration of course will be in the area of foreign policy, where the utter ineptitude of Obama and his liberal cronies have reduced his promise to usher the world to an era of harmony and prosperity to ridicule as he has stumbles from one disaster to another. A very special kind of incompetence was required to make the messes created by his predecessor George W Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan worse, but Obie managed to pull it off.

Essential reading for our American readers who must soon decide who they want as their next president. Important too for non Americans who cannot influence the outcome of the election but are entitled to know why their arses might be blown from here to eternity sometime in the next few years.